Poets

Poets, I read them
and there is always more to read. An unfillable void,
a vortex of not having enough time. Life is not only short, but a progeria case. It grows older, but stays the same size, a distortion of the fullness of the generally held average of height, weight, width and overall appearance. Creatives live a doll’s life. Innards still grow old
and die. The body of work stays the same,
hopefully a carefully crafted carapus,
eventually a sarcophagus
of loves and laments, musings and music.

Poets, I read them and poet, I am one or at least I pretend
and play at it. Imbibing their midday Meyer’s Rum, white chocolate liqueur and soy milk. Gulping half the glass, I stand outside, weed-tipped cigarillo, sparked. Gray hot Long Beach silt under
and over my feet, covering and filling
the tiny crevices and ridges of my toes.
This soil is to dirt
and sand as a mule is to a donkey
and a horse. Yet plants grow
like the Lewis Carroll orchids to my left, who sway
light crimson in the breeze with indifference
over the spotty patches of grass, the ground’s pubescent attempt at facial hair. Going further, being wary
of spider web tripwire, I stare at the trap’s maker,
its engineer
and I wonder how does
this little eight legged brown thing
survive? How does it get out amongst all this? I know how it did, “they were here before us,” a voice says
as the brown leaf paper is almost
burning my fingers,
singeing the first couple of layers
atop the musculature and bone of my pointer, my index. Scrunching it into the base of a planter,
I dance across the hot gray Long Beach silt.
The mule dust’s heat, a test of faith and self. Rocks
and white dog shit in the noonish glare, obstacles
to keep me away from

poets, so I don’t have to read them, and a poet, so I don’t have to be him.